George Ward

[TrueBlueTerrier]

A bit biased - it is the Torygraph after all - but an interesting article which showed what power postal unions had once.

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George Ward, who has died aged 79, was a businessman who became a national figure in 1976 when unions tried to shut his mail-order photo-processing plant at Willesden, north London, in a row over union recognition.

Ward’s firm, Grunwick, became synonymous with the ugly violence of the picket line as a howling mob descended outside his factory gates. The dispute became a political trial of strength that sowed the seeds of the union reforms under the government of Mrs Thatcher.

Nearly two years of industrial action started in August 1976 when Ward refused to recognise the trade union Apex, which some of his mainly female and Asian workforce had joined in order to press their case for better pay and conditions. In response, about 150 workers – just under half the workforce – went on strike. They were all sacked.

Their cause was soon taken up by union activists, and eventually by the hierarchy of the Trades Union Congress in the shape of the General Secretary, Len Murray, and the TGWU’s Jack Dromey. Union leaders felt that Grunwick was a winnable fight.

“We were going to be made an example of to all independent companies; we were going to be flattened,” Ward recalled. “I remember Len Murray saying, 'If we can’t beat Grunwick, then we can’t beat anything at all.’”

The TUC had good reason to be optimistic. A few years previously two national miners’ strikes had seen the defeat of the Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath, and there had been many other successful official stoppages since under Labour. But the unions did not reckon on Ward or on the Opposition leader Margaret Thatcher.

The decision by postmen at the local sorting office in Cricklewood to black Grunwick’s mail almost won the dispute for the strikers. But at the start of November 1976, Ward, supported by the National Association for Freedom, a pressure group run by the Conservative MP John Gorst, launched a successful legal challenge in the High Court.

The initiative was backed by Margaret Thatcher, who hailed Ward as a champion of freedom. The blacking of the sorting office was called off and defeat stared the strikers in the face. Yet instead of backing down, they maintained their picket and the dispute became a highly political trial of strength. Labour cabinet ministers including Shirley Williams, Denis Howell and Fred Mulley, even joined the picket line in support of the strikers.

As time moved on the dispute became increasingly ugly. Mass pickets moved in, secondary strikes were called in sympathy, violence broke out and Arthur Scargill brought his miners down from Yorkshire.

Those who continued to work had milk bottles thrown at them and buses had to be fitted with metal grilles. Posters were made of people the demonstrators believed had defied the strike. Clashes were frequent, and demonstrators taunted the police by dressing up in pig masks and toy helmets. Grunwick became known in the press as the “Ascot of the Left”.

Len Murray complained later that the dispute had got “out of hand” and had been taken over by militant fanatics. “There were calls for us to blacklist Grunwick’s post forever, drive the company out of business, and even turn off Mr Ward’s gas, water and electricity. All very illegal and very unacceptable to the majority of moderate British people,” he conceded.

In the summer of 1977 the embarrassed Labour Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan, supported by an equally embarrassed Len Murray, called an inquiry under Lord Scarman to find a way of resolving the dispute. Scarman recommended the reinstatement of the strikers, and said that the management had acted “within the letter but outside the spirit of the law” and that union recognition could “help the company as well as the employees” — a piece of fudge that was summarily rejected by Ward. The strikers were not reinstated and the union was not recognised.

Towards the end of the year a House of Lords ruling upheld Ward’s right not to recognise the union and subsequently the strike’s support from other unions began to slip away. On July 14 1978 the strikers called off their action, nearly two years after it had begun, with the Left accusing the TUC of betrayal.

Ward became something of a folk hero in Conservative circles, but preferred to see the dispute in more parochial terms: “The reason they lost is that people generally were very fair-minded and didn’t like what they were seeing. People started saying it can’t be that bad a company if people are still going through the picket lines to get to work.”

George Ward was born in New Delhi on April 2 1933 to Anglo-Indian parents. His father was an accountant with the Indian Railways and his early years were spent in some comfort. The family had servants and even their own railway carriage, and George enjoyed visits with his father to the Calcutta races. “I wanted to be a jockey. My mother said: 'No way, you will grow too big’,” he recalled.

In 1938, however, his father lost his money in a series of unwise investments; and in 1941 he died, leaving his financial affairs in a mess. In 1948, following Independence, his mother decided to move her family, and the 15-year-old George and his sister Jean, to England. They arrived with just £12 10s, moved into a small bed-sitter in Bayswater and later a council flat in north London. At times the family was so short of money that all they had to eat was bread and jam. Forced to find a job, George began working as a postboy for a wholesale clothes firm near Piccadilly.

Anxious to get ahead, he won a scholarship to Regent Street Polytechnic, where he studied Economics, then qualified as an accountant with the King’s Cross firm of Burke, Covington and Nash. After three years working in Rio de Janeiro he returned to Britain in 1963 and became a partner with the firm.

In India, Ward had attended a school run by the Irish Christian Brothers, and in Britain he attended Mass at St Dominic’s, Camden, where he became friends with John Hickey and Tony Grundy. In 1965 the three men got together to found Grunwick (the name was an acronym of their surnames), a photographic laboratory that they initially ran out of a rented garage in St John’s Wood.

Ward poured his savings into the company and regularly worked until two in the morning. Little by little, by offering better terms and quicker delivery than their competitors, Grunwick got ahead. The firm went into colour processing and mail order, took on more staff and, in 1972, moved to new premises in Willesden.

Having survived the strike, Ward built Grunwick into what, by the 1990s, was the largest privately owned photo processing laboratory in the world under one roof.

Ward then returned to his first love, horse racing – this time as a sponsor. Beginning with the Grunwick National Hunt Flat Race series, over 22 years he poured £25 million into race sponsorship; and his Bonusprint, Doubleprint and Tripleprint banners became a feature on many leading British racecourses. Races he sponsored included the Bonusprint King George at Kempton on Boxing Day; the Tripleprint Gold Cup at Cheltenham in December; the Bonusprint Stayers’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival; the Bonusprint Bula Hurdle; the Bonusprint Old Roan Chase; and Haydock’s Bonusprint Champion Hurdle. In addition Ward sponsored the All Weather Championships at the Arena all weather tracks and numerous charity events.

With Bernard Gover, he also took over and relaunched the Horseracing Sponsors Association, which represents the interests of all UK horse racing sponsors.

Ward was proud of his achievements at Grunwick, and on two occasions — in 1982 and 2007 — won libel damages from the BBC after it broadcast (and then rebroadcast) claims by Shirley Williams about “Victorian” working practices at the company.

Yet while he remained a hero to many Conservatives, Ward’s relations with the party hierarchy were not always happy. In 1998 the then Tory leader William Hague announced the suspension of the Hendon party, of which Ward was chairman – the first such move in 50 years. Ward was accused of bringing in relatives and employees to take control of the association and signing up 50 new members in the run-up to the annual meeting, when he was challenged for the chairmanship. Ward denied the allegations.

Ward continued to work until shortly before his death. Although the firm adapted to the digital camera revolution, it saw a marked decline in its business. After selling its main Bonusprint business in January last year, Grunwick closed in May 2011.

George Ward married, in 1965, Loretto Hanley, who survives him with two sons.

George Ward, born April 2 1933, died April 23 2012

[Lounge Lizard]

Grunwick, Bonusprint - I never knew the connection.

[NWpostie]

Whats so bad about Union recognition anyway and summarily sacking people is bound to be counter productive, Ward wanted to play the Victorian Boss, the Liverpool Dock company tried that and ended up with a bad PR disaster and a long running dispute, it could have all been sorted in a 30 minute meeting, instead they choose to repeat the mistakes of the past, of course they won in the end but at a great cost, far more than it would have needed to be, I have no doubt it will happen again and again, p1ss people off enough they will take it further and not slink away quietly.

[Martin Walsh]

What the London Divisional Oiffcers and the Cricklewood postal workers did was brave. The pressure they were under from everyone including the UPW. John Taylor RIP and Derek Walsh both From the London Divisional Council were threatened with expulsion from the UPW and fined but still would not budge from the principle and the Cricklewood Postal workers were solid in support.

At this years conference a special ceremony was heard to thank the Cricklewood union and Derek Walsh and the Grunwick workers long overdue.